The spring of the following year (1900) saw us again in Rome. We spent our April fortnight there, of which I specially remember some amusing hours with Sir William Harcourt. I see myself, for instance, as a rather nervous tourist in his wake and that of the very determined wife of a young diplomat, storming the Vatican library at an hour when a bland _custode_ assured us firmly it was _not_ open to visitors. But Sir William's great height and bulk, aided by his pretty companion's self-will, simply carried us through the gates by their natural momentum. Father Ehrle was sent for and came, and we spent a triumphant and delightful hour. After all, one is not an ex-British Cabinet Minister for nothing. Sir William was perfectly civil to everybody, with a blinking smile like that of the Cheshire cat; but nothing stopped him. I laugh still at the remembrance. On the way home it was wet, and he and I shared a _legno_. I remember we talked of Mr. Chamberlain, with whom at that moment--May, 1899--Sir William was not in love; and of Lord Hartington. "Hartington came to me one day when we were both serving under Mr. G., and said to me in a temper, 'I wish I could get Gladstone to answer letters.' 'My dear fellow, he always answers letters.' 'Well, I have been trying to do something and I can't get a word out of him.' 'What have you been trying to do?' 'Well, to tell the truth, I've been trying to make a bishop.' 'Have you? Not much in your line, I should think. Now if it had been something about a horse--' 'Don't be absurd. He would have made a very good bishop. C---- and S---- [naming two well-known Liberals] told me I must--so I wrote--- and not a word! Very uncivil, I call it.' 'Who was it?' 'Oh, I can't remember. Let me think. Oh yes, it was a man with a double name--Llewellyn-Davies.' Sir William, with a shout of laughter, 'Why, it took me five years to get him made a Canon!'" The following year I sent him _Eleanor_, as a reminder of our meeting in Rome, and he wrote: To me the revisiting of Rome is the brightest spot of the day-dreams of life, and I treasure all its recollections. After the disappointment of the day when we were to have seen Albano and Nemi under your guidance, we managed the expedition, and were entranced with the scene even beyond our hopes, and since that time I have lived through it again in the pages of _Eleanor_, which I read with greediness, waiting each number as it appeared.